After playing the new Tomb Raider game, and having a deep and abiding love for LOST, I decided to start planning a game. A game where the PCs are survivors of a plane crash on a mysterious island, with a scary monster, and scarier natives!

I know that seems pretty close to, and almost a rip off of, LOST, but I'm throwing some curve balls in there too For starters, the "Others" are going to be a group of Imperial Japanese holdouts who have managed to survive on this island for roughly 70 years... (I already know how they pulled that off)

When the IJ troops were fortifying the island, they discovered a series of tunnels inscribed with Greek looking symbols. These tunnels form a labyrinth designed to contain Asterion, the Minotaur of myth. And Asterion wants out. Badly.

Then there is a lone Norwegian survivor named Einar Heyerdahl, who will be taking the place of Rosseau from the show. Einar also made a map, and if you all are interested, I will try and figure out how to post a picture of it.

Now, the reason I am posting here is that I want some advice from my fellow Savages! Any ideas you might have, for NPCS, or adventure hooks, what have you. I also would really like a cool title for this campaign!

Dude, I don't know how you've managed to download parts of my brain, but I like it! lol

I'm putting together a Lost home brew, with elements of bioshock, and a little sliders for good measure.

Basic concept is an island (size of hawaii) that time jumps in a bubble of sorts and over the centuries has trapped all kinds of sea faring cultures on it. Polynesians who live in ewok tree villages high above a dinosaur infested jungle, Vikings that have a deal with an unknown force to throw women in a large hole in exchange for food and weapons, Spanish pirates that facilitate trade in small airships, a group of Japanese with American Pow's who get along now, and a group of archeologists from the future who are there on purpose for secretive reasons.

The people that built it still live underground in the original timeship that's accumulated sedement and plants over the eons. And are so highly evolved they don't have bodies and pay no real attention to what happens on the surface.

But the island is filled with ruins of long died out survivors including a large city of vampire zombies which are why the dinosaurs were brought in, labs used by the ancient ones who still care about learning new things and do experiments on the island inhabitants, temples of shaolin like monks that keep the island in balance with meditation and element manipulation, and temporal paradox exhaust caves where the temporal energy from the time engine is vented to fixed points in time that make traveling to them possible for short periods.

I was building it more as a sandbox with a bunch of plot options depending on what the posse seemed into once they got there. The way I have it now, their ship (long term research vessel on a promotional cruise) gets cut in half by the time bubble. The survivors make camp on the island in a small maze of rock tower islands like you see in Thailand. Then go from there exploring and getting caught up in one feud or another.

I'm thinking they'll stat their characters up as themselves, and have the opportunity to gain all kinds of weird powers in the labs.

If you're interested I can start posting my notes in here. Had been meaning to get feedback when it was more coherent. But might be better to do it earlier in the process.

For a title, I'd stick with the very best in horror movie traditions and name it "The Island", it begs the question so what is the island really about, do we know? can we even find out? Do we just want off?

For plot ideas, I'd open with fairly routine survival, finding enough food, shelter, water, supplies and let them settle into a good group dynamic.

Consider splitting the NPC's into at least 2, and preferably 3 groups, and see whether your PC's form group number 4, or go along/take over one of the existing groups. Typical groups would be Escapists (We must do everything we can do escape), Realists (Let's make the best of this) and Survivalists (Wow, this is awesome, we must do everything we can to survive)_________________Life: Past trends are not an indication of future performance

The One, I'm with you on the group dynamic thing. On the first night, I plan to have a pretty straightforward Good Guy who stand up and makes a nice speech about working together for survival and escape... and then in the middle gets grabbed by the monster, right in front of everyone.

Then there is Major Henry Cruise, who is going to start going to be a Leader, then the PCs are ally with him or work against him. Regardless, he will eventually start seeing The Island (I think you're right on the keeping the title as that) as his private fiefdom and then proceed to Colonel Kurtz-ify from there.

Nordicnomad, that sounds really cool! I don't think I am going to make my island quite so big or populated. I want to keep the focus on the Imperial Japanese group and Asterion's attempts to get off the Island or at least sow discord and cause as much pain and suffering as possible.

Oh, fun fact: according to Wikipedia, Asterion means "ruler of the stars," which to me implies a more cosmic significance to the Minotaur's imprisonment.

Ha, fair enough. I suppose I did stray a bit from the source material.

Though I think part of the challenge of a setting like this is having a bunch of stuff behind the scenes, but they only see a small aspect of it at anyone time. So on the surface it's a normal island, but with seemingly bizarre things they come across on a regular enough basis to be interesting and actually make sense once you figure out what's going on.

The One, I'm with you on the group dynamic thing. On the first night, I plan to have a pretty straightforward Good Guy who stand up and makes a nice speech about working together for survival and escape... and then in the middle gets grabbed by the monster, right in front of everyone.....

Oooh, far too blatant for the early stage. Have everyone settle in for the night, and in the morning, the good guy is gone with half the suppliers and the only working inflatable raft, it looks like he just upped and left right?

Later on, the find the raft wrapped around his corpse, no visible injuries and the empty wrappers of the food left around. If anyone thinks to check, his mouth is crammed full of half chewed food as someone force fed him to death.

If you must have the monster grab him, at least make it some kind of pit that opens up and swallows him, giving no sight of the monster, and only the most basic hints of what happened_________________Life: Past trends are not an indication of future performance

Dang, that's some good stuff. My plan was to have the monster (a Smoke Monster, naturally) grab and pull him. It would be dark, so tough to see what exactly happened. The brutality of the attack would leave a clear trail to the corpse but no sign of what could have done the deed.

Giant ant lion.
Filled with sand but if they kill it and excavate a little bit, they come across part of the catacombs.

You have your main island, a rock spire a couple of hundred feet tall 100yards or so away, and a smaller island or two a little father off. This gives some more adventure sites not as easily accessible that you can have weird lights or noises emanate from.

The monster, when it gets freed, comes out at night, steals food, etc., but after wandering the island figures out it's just as screwed as the castaways! Might actually become friendly depending on the players treatment of it.

EDIT: Smoke monster? I thought you were going to have a minotaur or something. Several monsters on the island?
EDIT AGAIN!: Maybe you could get some use out of Realms of Cthulhu.

SteveN_________________"We've got a blind date with destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster." <The Shoveller>

I'm thinking that the myths didn't get it 100% accurate, and that Asterion is seriously powerful, on a cosmic scale. Maybe I could get some use out of Realms of Cthulhu!

*My* smoke monster is going to be a semi-sentient electro-magnetic being, made up of millions of bits of iron dust. Or maybe he's a manifestation of Asterion's will... Or maybe its a "security system" to make sure Asterion doesn't get loose.

Then we have undead Imperial Japanese troops who need spare parts to repair damage done to them... But I guess that isn't really relevant to this post

When the IJ troops were fortifying the Island and building the labs for Unit 731 (a real group ) they discovered a series of stone tunnels that sported a bunch of inscriptions that resembled ancient Greek writing. Including the Greek meander symbol, which represents a labyrinth.

So yes, there are stone corridors.... and maybe some "Stargate-ish" things!